


Sheltered Truths

by badwolfrun



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-05 15:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17327897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badwolfrun/pseuds/badwolfrun
Summary: Between nightmares, underground bunkers and missing persons cases with all too-familiar circumstances, the last two weeks have been plunging Nick into his own private hell that becomes not-so private when things go wrong during a missing persons case that leads Nick and Warrick to an exclusive club that experiments with hallucinogens. A friendship fic.





	1. Under the bed

The Las Vegas crime lab is bathed in green light. Nobody is present except for a frantic Nick Stokes, circling the hallways aimlessly, unsure of why he’s in the lab if nobody else is. 

“Hello? Is anybody here? Warrick? Cath? Sara? Greg? Gris?” He shouts, but there’s no response.

He’s sweating profusely, the air is thin, the glass walls of the lab seem to condense and move closer to him at each turn. He tries to leave through the glass doors of the main entrance, but the doors won’t budge. He tries to leave through the emergency exits, but they won’t budge either. Every time he tries to enter one of the offices or lab rooms, he finds himself back in the hallway. And endless loop. He starts to run, but his progress is slow, as if he were running through water. 

He stops to try and catch his breath, finding himself in front of the crime solve score board in the lab, all of the names  at the top of the board are his, all of the cases read “Missing Person.”

Sounds of laughter fade in, coming from the A/V Lab. He runs, not caring who the laughing is coming from, he just wants to see somebody, talk to somebody, to remind him that he’s not alone in this world. As he gets closer, it sounds like it’s multiple people laughing. 

The whole team, except Grissom, are gathered around one of the computer monitors, laughing at some silent footage displayed on the screen. Nick tries to talk to them, but no noise comes out of his body. He tries to physically get their attention, poking them, pushing them, but their eyes are glued to the screen. They don’t acknowledge that he’s there.

As Nick finally directs his attention to the monitor, a pale white light flashes on erasing the green glow, and the lab is over-illuminated in this harsh light. On the screen is a man, writhing and wriggling in the confines of a Plexiglas prison. 

“Oh, here comes my favorite part!” Warrick laughs, as the man begins to chew something before sticking it in his ears. 

Nick watches as the man puts a gun against his chin, the laughter from his teammates intensifies. 

“Do it, do it, do it,” they begin to chant. Nick suddenly feels nauseous, tries to place himself in front of the monitor, but he is just shoved aside. He finds himself on the floor, the footage on the computer shows up on the rest of the monitors in the lab, including the one on the wall, which he can just barely see from where he lays. 

The team cheers as the man on the monitor shoots the gun--and the last thing he hears is the gunshot before the lab is plunged into darkness, and he sits up--

Gasping for breath, he’s thrown off balance as the surface beneath him is no longer the cold, hard surface of the lab floor, but instead the soft, springy surface of his bed. He wipes the beads of sweat from his forehead and his blurred vision whips past the hand-drawn card from Cassie, focusing on the bright red numbers on his alarm clock. It’s one in the afternoon. He had been asleep for maybe an hour, and he still has plenty of time to rest before going he needs to get ready for work.

He sighs, throwing the blankets aside as he rolls out of his bed and heads toward the window. He had forgotten to open it before going settling into bed. He may as well keep them open at all times, but has investigated too many B&E cases to know better. He touches his forehead to the glass of his window, letting the breeze of hot air flow through the mesh screen against his body. 

He falls back onto bed, wondering why Grissom wasn’t in the lab with everyone else in his recent nightmare, but still thankful that he didn’t show up. Whenever Grissom is in his dreams, so are the ants…

He shakes his head, adjusts himself into a comfortable position. He begins to count down from ten, shutting his eyes tight, trying to think about birds, of flying, of fresh air, but the laughter of his co-workers still seems to echo, and his thoughts go back to the crime lab.   
Maybe Grissom wasn’t there because he was getting the case assignments ready for the night...

_ “You have a missing person’s case,”  _ Grissom’s voice echoes in his head. “ _ Last known location was a trash run on Flamingo and Koval _ .”

He’s back in the lab, green light glowing from beneath him, he’s laying on another hard surface, his hands brush up against empty gum wrappers, before hitting an invisible wall. He can’t seem to sit up, but he can see pictures laying around the table in a neat and orderly fashion. He can just barely see the contents, pictures of blood pools, an empty house, children’s drawings, a young girl’s bedroom, a shoe full of cough syrup...

“Any word from Nick?” Sara asks. He looks up, she’s standing next to the table, looking down at him.

“No, he’s still out there searching.” Greg replies, he’s standing on the other side.

“Hey, guys, I’m right here!” he shouts out, but they ignore him. 

Sara taps her fingers on top of the seemingly invisible wall above him. As her fingers touch the surface, he suddenly sees that he’s surrounded with scratched up Plexiglas, two fans to his right side, and a light bulb at his feet.

“How long do you think you could last?” Sara asks, looking right at Nick though the question is for Greg.

“I don’t know. Not as long as he did.”

“Hey, have you two seen my fire ant farm?” Grissom’s voice suddenly calls into the room. Greg and Sara look away, and thousands of ants suddenly swarm into the box around Nick. He begins to scream, his heart pounding at the tingling, crawling sensation tickles every inch of his body, followed by pinching, burning, venom flowing into his bloodstream.

He sits up once again, this time immediately bolting out of bed and running to his shower, turning the water on the coldest setting, nearly tripping as he fumbles to get his boxers off. Water mingles with tears as he wipes away the invisible ants as drops of cold water flick at his body. He lets out the air he kept trapped inside his body once he had woken up, and turns the water off. 

He slumps against the wall of the shower, staring at the puddle of water that had spilled out onto the floor. He still hasn’t replaced the door to his shower that had gone missing after the first night he returned home from the hospital.

He takes a few deep breaths and walks back out to his bedroom for a new pair of boxers. He glances at the clock, it’s one forty-five in the afternoon. He cleans up the mess in the bathroom and resolves to watch some Animal Planet to calm his nerves. He starts off sitting on the couch, mindlessly checking baseball scores on his laptop as animal sounds drown out the laughter and screaming in his mind. After an hour or so, he finds himself laying on the couch, his head propped up against a Dallas cowboys throw pillow his mother bought him for Christmas last year. He feels himself nodding off during a documentary about woodpeckers, and staggers back to his bedroom through his wavering consciousness. He glances at the clock once more, it’s six in the evening. He still has a chance to get a little sleep before work.

He doesn’t bother to cover himself with a blanket, the second his head hits the pillow, he’s falls into a dark, dreamless sleep. 

For what he hopes is a few hours of rest, the world is quiet and dark. All too soon, the darkness fades into green, and the softness of his bed seems to harden beneath him. He suddenly feels cold, and tries to reach out for the blanket he neglected, but his arm hits a wall instead. He rolls onto his side, but feels a sudden free-fall sensation until hitting another wall. He keeps tossing, turning, trying to find space to move freely in, but he’s confined to condensed, green-glowing walls. He wipes away the condensation of the wall above him, and sees a woman standing over him, watching him. She’s wearing a prison uniform, staring down at him, holding a shovel in one hand.

“Kelly Gordon? You got out?” His voice is higher than normal, panicked. “What-What are you doing? Let me out of here!”

“I’m finishing what my father started,” she tells him coldly. She throws the shovel aside, and backs away. He can hear distant beeping sounds, and in her place comes the source of the blaring alarm, a large backhoe that looms above him, dirt slowly spilling out of the cradle before crashing on him all at once.

“KELLY, WAIT--NO--PLEASE! HELP!”

He sits up, and is immediately met with a pinch to his forehead, like he had been stuck with a needle. He blinks as the green hue in his vision disappears, and he’s left staring at the box springs underneath his mattress. He groans, he’s under his bed for the third time this week. 

He slides himself out from underneath the bed, using his end table as support to stand up. His heart sinks as he looks at his alarm clock; he’s late for work.


	2. Lingering Questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grissom doesn’t admit it, maybe even to himself, but Nick knows that he has a way of reading people, reading Nick like nobody else can.

Nick mutters a few curse words and tosses the room, looking for his cell phone. He presses Grissom’s number on speed dial. 

“Nicky? Is everything okay? I’m about to start handing out assignments.”

“Yeah, so-sorry boss, alarm didn’t go off, I’m on my way now--”

“It’s okay, Nick--”

He’s only slightly surprised at the unexpected softness in Grissom’s voice, having expected a firm, disciplinary tone, but Grissom has been more...lenient with Nick as of late. 

“No, no, Gris, it’s not. It won’t happen again.” 

Nick can’t mask the annoyance in his voice, knowing fully well that Grissom’s cutting him a break for the third time this month on something that Nick’s messed up on. He misses the days of old, where there were consequences to his actions, not this forced sympathy from his colleagues. 

He doesn’t even wait for Grissom’s response before hanging up and rushing out the door, scooping up his backpack and a jacket. He’ll change into more decent clothing at the lab, when time allows.

He spends most of the drive blasting loud music on the radio, trying to shake off the remnants of his nightmares. By the time he arrives to the lab, he’s fully rooted in reality. He darts past the desk towards the break room, where he presumed Grissom was waiting, but he stops once he hears a man clear his throat.

“Nick, why don’t you come into my office?” Grissom’s voice speaks behind him. Nick turns around, sees Grissom’s left eyebrow raise as he nods to the room.

Grissom closes the door behind him.

“What happened to your forehead?” Grissom asks as moves past Nick, sitting down in his chair behind his desk.

“Just...tripped,” Nick mumbles under his breath. He stifles a yawn, rubbing a fist against his stubbled chin.

“Did you get any sleep last night?” 

_ What is this, twenty questions? _ Nick thinks to himself. 

“Not really. Listen, Gris, what’s this about? Is this about what happened last week? I know it was dumb, I lost my temper, it wasn’t right, I apologized.” 

“Yes, you did, to Sara, but not to the department. Not to the suspect--”

“That little... _ pervert _ deserved it, Grissom. If you would have seen what he--”   


“I read the report, Nicky. That’s not why I called you in here,” 

Nick’s heart rate starts racing. Is he going to get suspended? Did Grissom call him in here to fire him? 

Grissom sighs, taking off his glasses, rubbing a hand against his forehead. Nick can see the reluctance painted all over his face, which doesn’t do anything but intensify Nick’s anxiety.

“I heard you, uh...I heard you stopped going to your therapist.”

_ Shit. _

Nick averts his eyes from Grissom’s gaze, focusing on the pig in the jar on the shelf next to Grissom’s desk. Grissom doesn’t admit it, maybe even to himself, but Nick knows that he has a way of reading people, reading  _ Nick _ like nobody else can. 

“And?” Nick asks in a low voice. He can feel his heart rate increase, his nostrils flare upward, preparing himself for an outburst that’s rising inside of his chest. He thinks back to the last session, where he tried--he tried  _ so hard _ to explain his feelings as he descended down into a bunker--which Nick had tried to avoid talking about in the first place, but somehow the therapist had a way of bringing it to the surface anyhow. How the therapist kept asking Nick how it felt, to descend into a dark, enclosed space underneath the earth. How the therapist kept drilling him, asking Nick to describe how it felt, walking through the dimly-lit hallway, as the walls began to shrink in on him. How the therapist and him walked through his nightmares, together, with Nick mentioning how he wakes up underneath the bed.

He thinks back to how he told the therapist that he was full of shit, when the therapist pointed out to Nick that a small part of him may actually  _ miss _ the coffin.

He clenches the chair beneath him, trying to steady his breathing. Why did Grissom have to bring this up  _ now _ ? It’s none of his business.

“And, I’m...concerned, Nicky. What you went through--”

Nick let out a dry chuckle. Grissom,  _ concerned? _

“It’s-I’m  _ fine, Gil. _ ..Really,” Nick snarled, looking Grissom directly in the eyes. Grissom raises his eyebrows at the sudden flash of fierceness, and Nick closes his eyes, trying to shove down everything he wants to tell Grissom.

He wants to tell Grissom to keep out of his private life, what does it matter, he doesn’t need to know what happens when Nick is at home. He wants to tell him how he didn’t need therapy, working out and eating healthier is doing just fine for him. He wants to tell Grissom what he  _ truly _ went through, because whatever they thought they saw on that computer monitor, was not nearly as terrible as what Nick Stokes actually went through that day.

But instead he says nothing, and an awkward silence lingers in the air between them. Nick wonders how it’s come to this. 

After a couple minutes, Grissom furrows his brow again, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, and hands Nick a slip of paper.

“You and Warrick are teaming up on a missing person’s case.”

“That’s it?” 

“Yeah, that’s it. Warrick said he’d meet you in the garage.”

Nick gets up as Grissom begins to work on paperwork again. He stands for a moment, his mouth hanging open, his tongue licking over his lips, as if he were going to say something to his boss. A pang of guilt seeps over him as he realizes he shouldn’t have refused the rare opportunity Grissom handed him to open up, but then again...what does he care?

Nick is almost out the room, when Grissom beckons out to him.

“Remember what I told you, in the hospital?” 

He says it as a question, but it doesn’t require an answer. Nick gets the message loud and clear, gives his boss a small smile and a nod before heading towards the locker room.

_ Don’t take it with you. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going for a slow build on this one. This might be the last we see of Grissom for a while, but don't worry, he'll be back!


End file.
